NewsNet

NewsNet (stylized as NEWSnet) was an American news-oriented free-to-air television network and newscast production company owned by Bridge News, LLC, which itself is owned by Manoj Bhargava's Bridge Media Networks. The network was structured to broadcast a tightly-formatted 30-minute newswheel 24 hours a day, incorporating freshly-updated information that covers various areas of interest (such as national news, sports, entertainment, weather and business). Breaking news stories were updated constantly as they developed and new information became available.

In addition to being carried on digital subchannels of affiliated television stations, NewsNet also distributed its programming through a livestream that is available on its website, as well as its mobile app in areas where it did not have a terrestrial TV affiliate. The network also provided an optional turnkey local news production service (Custom Newsroom Solutions) for stations that did not maintain their own local news departments to produce local news capsule segments or full-length newscasts. NewsNet's primary studio facilities (which also houses master control operations of the network's flagship station WMNN-LD [channel 26] and dual MyNetworkTV/Cozi TV affiliate WXII-LD [channel 12]) were located on West 13th Street and 3rd Avenue in Cadillac, while its secondary studio facilities were located on Haggerty Road in Farmington Hills, Michigan.

On September 28, 2017, Eric Wotila – who founded low-power all-news station WMNN-LD in Cadillac, Michigan and oversaw the studio design and construction for News Channel Nebraska, a Norfolk, Nebraska-based quasi-state network of five low-power stations that also maintained an all-news programming format – started a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter to fund the launch of a 24-hour national news channel – under the working title, the Local News Network (LNN) – intended for broadcast, online and mobile distribution.

Citing favorable opinions from viewers about the "straight-to-the-facts, no-nonsense and commentary-free" coverage provided by WMNN-LD, the Local News Network proposed to offer a news wheel format (similar in structure to the 1982–2005 format of HLN, and the formats of defunct all-news networks such as All News Channel and Satellite News Channel) that would eschew the often-politically focused panel discussion programs that have populated the afternoon, nighttime and weekend schedules of cable news channels (particularly CNN, MSNBC and Fox News Channel) since the early 2000s. The project called for LNN to be based out of WMNN's Cadillac studio facility, with the hope of eventually opening bureaus elsewhere around the United States. The project failed to reach its funding goal of $100,000 needed to develop LNN – which would have been used to pay for equipment and staffing necessary to handle the national broadcasts – by the closure of the 50-day campaign on November 17, 2017, raising only $8,012 from 78 public backers. Wotila subsequently sought to obtain backing from investors to fund the venture.

On March 15, 2018, Wotila and other partners involved in the LNN project announced the launch of NewsNet, which would maintain the concept originally developed prior to the commencement of the Kickstarter campaign.

NewsNet signed on for the first time on January 1, 2019 at 7:00 p.m. Eastern Time, with Evening Edition serving as the network's inaugural program. On May 8, 2019, ground was broken on new studios. The facility will consist of three studios, each with their own control rooms and a new, state-of-the-art master control room overseeing the operations of NewsNet, WMNN-LD and WXII-LP. The new studio debuted on-air at 4:00 a.m. ET on December 9.

Because of Wotila's involvement with News Channel Nebraska, NewsNet did not compete with NCN and had no affiliates in that state.

In 2020, NewsNet picked up agreements from Coastal Television's ABC & FOX stations in Anchorage and Fairbanks, Alaska to start producing newscasts for them due to the economic impact of COVID 19. Coastal would further expand the agreement to include their stations in Casper and Cheyenne, Wyoming. Coastal ended the agreements in early 2022 upon purchase of the NewsHub from Waypoint Media. Marquee Broadcasting signed an agreement in 2022 for their Georgia stations in Macon and Toccoa for production of a 9 PM newscast called Georgia's News at Nine. The Macon station ended the agreement upon the sale from Marquee to Gray Television and production for the Macon newscast was shifted over to WANF-TV. Production for Toccoa ended in 2023 after the partnership dissolved.